Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell you it again when you're fifty, though you may… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
After a long time spent learning how to write as a woman instead of as an honorary man, I was able to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Contrast J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Sometimes one's very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil. In an America where our… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Critics and academics have been trying for forty years to bury the greatest work of imaginative fiction in English. They ignore it,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Back then, in 1967, wizards were all, more or less, Merlin and Gandalf. Old men, peaked hats, white beards. But this was… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane – bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“Art is not a horse race. Literature is not the Olympics. The hell with The Great American Novel. We have all the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I go on writing in both respectable and despised genres because I respect them all, rejoice in their differences, and reject only… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
You know, I don't think a lot about why one book connects with its readers and another doesn't. Probably because I don't… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I tend to avoid fiction about dysfunctional urban middle-class people written in the present tense. This makes it hard to find a… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
No matter how successful, beloved, influential her work was, when a woman author dies, nine times out of ten, she gets dropped… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future,… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share Image
“...I wore his blood for clothing, on my legs and thighs and hands: a dry, stiff, brown garment with no warmth in it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Meaning - this is perhaps the common note, the bane I am seeking. What is the Meaning of this book, this event in the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“. . . chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told. — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Hector had no virtue?” “Of course he did. He won all his battles, till the last one.” “We all do,” Aeneas remarked.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“I was willing to believe him that most modern writing was trash, on the evidence that so much old writing was trash; but I… — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
“Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?” — Ursula K. Le Guin Copy Share
